Category Archives: 21st century teaching and learning

I took 16 pages of notes today. Four sessions. Four awesome sessions. But first, a bit of a flashback to yesterday: So Jay and I have attended this conference together for four years in a row, bringing various colleagues with … Continue reading →

(inspired by Taylor Mali’s poem, “I Teach for the Fire”) It seems only fitting to reflect on day one of NCTE with poetry inspired by Taylor Mali. I come to NCTE for the moments. For sitting down on the … Continue reading →

Two of us presented at the Colorado Language Arts Society Conference this weekend. We discussed our own struggles in trying to implement a workshop pedagogy in high school classrooms. Here is the intro video we created: And here is a … Continue reading →

As Dr. Z posted a while back, we have been experimenting with Schoology. Overall I have to say I really like it. This week I have been tweaking how I ask kids to respond in the discussion platform. I like … Continue reading →

This video was posted by a teacher friend this week. It’s Japanese (by Takuya Okada, from 2011, judging by the youtube channel), and from a bit of peripheral reading I picked up that it was inspired by conversations in Japan … Continue reading →

I was asked that question back at the beginning of the year. “Are you doing workshop?” The follow up questions usually revolve around something like ‘how will you fit it in?’ or ‘what will you not do?’ These questions reveal … Continue reading →

Phones–these little devices make me crazy. Last spring, my students could not keep their hands off of them. The combination of senioritis and Snapchat became potent. I felt powerless against it. I even got my own Snapchat account to figure out if … Continue reading →

Like this:

Our school district just adopted Schoology as our official learning management system. When I first heard this news I thought, “I’m so set with how I use Google sites and drive and docs to manage my courses that I don’t … Continue reading →

I wrote earlier this week to reflect on what my student end-of-year survey data suggested about how what we did with writing helped them as writers. And I’ll write later about how things went in terms of reading. This post … Continue reading →

July. And I’m working. Who was it that said teachers take summers off? I’m perusing the data I collected at the end of the school year regarding my students’ feedback about my class. It’s great information. I think I finally … Continue reading →